Current Mood : Friday tired.
Spent on dolls today : $3.
Sorry yesterday's entry didn't get posted in time - we kept losing power. Probably due to our lines getting blown around ! Had to retype my entry three times, and darn if it didn't go down again ! So I shut down early and we goofed off to a movie and a pizza last night. Of course, once I was away from the computer, the power didn't flicker once...
We were very lucky. Not an hour from here - in an area where Beloved Hubby frequently works - there were fires that damaged over a hundred homes. Nearby states got tornadoes, and there's more dangerous weather coming. Our winds have slowed today, but we're in for a soaked weekend. Fine with me. I'm just glad I had Brody unplugged during our frequent power outages. Some of these surges apparently took out our Wii, so I have to see what's wrong with it this weekend.
Got to hit the flea market, and while there were lots more dealers, there was also a ton of more crap. Seriously. One ‘vendor' didn't bother to display anything, he just set stuff out any which-way. Normally, even this wouldn't deter yer dedicated second-hand shopper, who has no problem sifting through boxes and piles, but his stuff was all in trash bags and Mal-Wart sacks tied shut. No way was I diggin' in any of ‘em. Who knows what a bare hand might encounter ?
I decided against the copyright-challenged Marilyn Monroe armless and headless ‘dress form' jewelry holder - it was quite ugly. Paint out of line everywhere, and I really don't think she posed her legs like that on the famous subway grate. I smiled when I saw a Talking View Master with some reels, I had one as a kid. It disappeared one day, and if I remember correctly, the entire line was recalled as a fire hazard. Shame, those transparent plastic records on the backs of the reels were pretty cool. But it was about $10. more than I had on me. Ditto the 50s-60s era child's embroidery set, incomplete, it was little more than a box and a square of stamped, stained cotton, but the vendor wanted $12. for it. At least the View-Master was reasonable !
Ended up buying Dusty up there from the car set dealer, mostly for her clothes and shoes. Poor thing. Dusty and Princess Leia (and also the 1978 National Velvet doll) share the same body mold, but Dusty came first, and they hadn't quite achieved the right balance of soft vinyl and hard plastic over at Kenner yet - most Dusty and Skye (her African-American friend) dolls suffer severe melting at the neck, arms, and hips. Often you'll see the end-line ‘Trade In Special !' Dusty dolls still in box, with terrible gluey marks at her leg/hip joints, visible from where the melt has adhered to the swimsuit.
It was much the same case here - I had to pry the clothes out of the melts, which is pretty darn disgusting when you think about it. This poor girl has great knee clicks, her hair's in good shape, and her face is unmarred at all, but with those melts, she's almost worthless. Her arms and legs don't move at all, and her head is stuck, too. I thought about finding an unwanted Leia and performing a head-swap, but you guys know I could never sacrifice a Leia doll.
To many, she's quite an ugly, masculine doll, but I remember her as a product of the times, from when Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova were challenging how we viewed ‘women's sports' from dainty dalliances that never damaged the manicure to full-out all-or-nothing combat, no genders barred ! And all women wore that shag haircut, no matter how awful it looked on 90% of us. Even the kids. Kinda like that ‘Jennifer Anniston' haircut that 3/5ths of women in the 90s sported, regardless that it usually hung straight and floppy, and was hard to maintain - unless you were JA. We challenged a lot of what the decades before us accepted, and Dusty was a reflection of that.
Yeah, she ain't Barbie. She has a thick waist, a modest bust, and flat feet. But she was a choice, and it seems Mattel would rather not have that, now or then. I wish Dusty had weathered better, so I could show her off to future generations, but maybe she was more a product of her times - and was destined to stay there - than I knew.
This Dusty is also one of the end-run trade-ins - there's no waist mechanism and her wrists don't bend - even her leg ‘bones' are different colors. You can see via the feet holes (for her sports activity stands) that her right leg mechanism is done in ‘skin' color, and her left is nearly translucent white. I'm wondering if there's some way I can save her. I already know she can't sit, and she's gonna wreck any outfit she wears, but maybe if I make her a bodysuit to absorb as much of the leaking plasticizer as possible...let me give it some thought...
That's the funny thing about the doll car-set seller. All her dolls - not in car sets - are $3. If it's an older doll, she's usually too badly wrecked to be worth even that, and the usually-still-pristine newer dolls aren't worth $3. used, either - especially when you can score a brand-new one for $5. or less. She had a cute Malibu Francie, too, but between the wrecked hair, damaged face paint, chewed right hand, and non-bending leg, she just didn't seem worth it. I'd have taken a flyer if I had a replacement Francie body, but I don't.
Oh, and here's something cool I can share with you. I'm a member of Dover Publications' ‘Free Sample' club -it's an online freebie, and every Friday, they send you an e-mail link to a page of downloadable samples from their sale coloring books, new graphic design volumes, paper dolls, sticker books, etc. I'll enclose that link to sign up too, if you're interested. And this week, it was just great to be a member ! I got to see their newest ‘Repeatable Textures' book, and it's chock-fulla great stuff to use with dolls. Walls, floors, roofs...all useful images. You even get ‘em as .jpegs on an included CD-Rom. Well worth the $20., in my opinion. There's brick, and tile, and industrial metal, wood, so many goodies. Here's a link to the book - you can read about it, and see the other volumes in the set. The one I'm squeeeeing over is the first one on the page, in green.
http://store.doverpublications.com/0486990192.html
Today's free sample included that great stone design you see on the cover, on the lowest right corner. Imagine the fun we can have with that ! There were other goodies, like a page from a book of old travel posters. Oooohh.... Here's the ‘join us' link ->
http://www.doverpublications.com/sampler1/
Imagine that. Me savin' my pennies for something that has nothing to do with machine embroidery !
In other news, I kept the housework thing going with dishes and laundry. It's nearly done - and I got the handkerchiefs from yesterday and Dusty's clothes clean. Only a couple melt-mark spots remain on her spring-time outfit, and there's a minor repair on the pants. The handkerchiefs are perfect, and after a few trials, I'll get them embroidered. It was just kind of a jolt at the flea, to see a pack of three embroidered men's handkerchiefs, with Uncle's initial already on them, for a buck. (sigh) I can only hope me doing the embroidering counts for something. Even if it's a small gift, I hate to give something that's near nothing, ya know ?
